Generally, people who have jobs that are unrelated to physical labor or require working in one place do not sufficiently move their bodies. Particularly, office workers who work at desks or aged people are inactive, generally suffer a weakening the muscles of parts of their bodies, thus making them evade exercise, further reducing physical activity. Such a lack of exercise may induce a variety of adult diseases.
Recently, interest in health has increased, so there is an increase in people who exercise. Thus, it is easy to find people who go to local mountains to hike or go to playgrounds or parks and run. Many people who cannot exercise outdoors or at playgrounds due to living conditions also use different kinds of exercise machines in their homes or local fitness centers. In many households, various kinds of exercise machines such as running machines, bench presses, etc. are being used.
However, such exercise machines are typically expensive and take up much space. Further, it is difficult for the elderly and the infirm to use such exercise machines.
Particularly, among parts of the body, the legs function to support the weight of the body and move the body. Therefore, because weakening of leg muscles reduces the ability to quickly react, mortal injuries may be caused. Particularly, many modern office workers wear shoes with high heels. Such people must sufficiently exercise the leg muscles or stretch them, because the time maintaining the leg muscles in a contracted state is excessively increased. Recently, there is an increase in the aged population. Aged people are typically slow-moving because of muscle weakening. Thus, aged people lack the ability to react to sudden danger, so that the risk of injury is increased. Therefore, a device to enable a user to conveniently and safely perform stretching exercises is required.
In an effort to achieve the above purpose, introduced were stretching devices which can be easily used indoors even by the elderly and the infirm, are comparatively inexpensive, and are provided with an inclined foothold to make it possible to strengthen waist muscles.
In an example, a muscle and joint stretching exercise device, which is made of wood and is configured in such a way that an inclined foothold is installed by means of a support that is disposed on a base plate, was proposed in Korean Utility Model Registration No. 20-0199661 (Publication date: Oct. 2, 2000).
However, in this conventional stretching exercise device, the foothold is supported on a small area of the support on the base plate, so that it is not reliably stable to support the foothold. Further, the structure of the device is complex, because separate front and side partitions are required to install the support. The complex structure increases the production cost.
In another example, a device for stretching the calf muscles and twisting the waist was proposed in Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2006-0100018 (date: Sep. 20, 2006). This conventional device includes an inclined foothold body which is provided on a rotating plate that is rotatably installed on a main body, and an inclination adjustment unit which has a height-adjustment support to adjust the inclination of the foothold body.
However, in this conventional device, the inclined foothold body is installed on the rotating plate. Thus, when a user stands on the inclined foothold body to stretch the waist, calf or thigh muscles, the rotating plate may undesirably rotate. In this case, the elderly and the infirm who are slow in their movements may fall down and be injured.
Particularly, it is required to restrictively rotate the rotating plate, since the elderly and the infirm may lose balance and fall when the rotating plate rotates.
Give this, a stretching device which has an improved structure to enable a user to more reliably and conveniently perform stretching exercises for the leg and waist muscles is required.